Diet Pepsi

Smoking is deemed no longer socially acceptable, I quit; the media tells me to reduce my carbon footprint, I ride my bike to work; gyms become the social capital of the city, I join the biggest and most expensive one.

Health has become a monopoly.

Ever since Billy Blanks and his Tae Bo videos took over the sports & fitness shelves at Blockbuster and Chuck Norris began endorsing the Total Gym on late-night television, we've become hooked on working out and being “healthy” — whatever that may mean exactly.

Does it refer to the annoying pang of guilt we all feel when we choose regular Pepsi instead of diet, or white bread instead of multigrain? Or is being healthy as simple as depriving ourselves of ice cream?

Low fat, non-fat, diet, sugar-free, 50 percent less salt, low-cal, organic — we’ve seen them all before. They are the pesky health food labels that consistently taunt us as we cruise down the aisles at the grocery store. Everything we eat has been made into these for-your-benefit weight-friendly products — even potato chips are low in fat.

Ever since we were old enough to sit-up at the dinner table, we’ve been told to eat our vegetables, and we all remember getting a stern slap on the wrist as we reached for the cookie jar. And the Body Break team, Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod, have been telling us this for years, why now have we only just started to listen?

It's not the celebrities that we're mimicking (they're too busy getting drunk and crashing into things) and I don't think there have been any amazing medical discoveries that have recently convinced us to wise up.

Perhaps we should all thank Lululemon for making workout gear part of our everyday attire or ER, Grey's Anatomy and House for making the ugly consequences of ignoring your health so in-your-face.

Exercise and healthy eating are mainstream now, and almost too easy and too fun to be "good" for us. I compare working out to broccoli and the fancy gyms and workout gear to the yummy Cheez Whiz that makes it all edible — or in this case, enjoyable. Lifting weights in a three-storey fortress in figure-hugging yoga pants and munching on a cookie dough-flavoured protein bar sounds like a pretty good Saturday afternoon to me.

Why wouldn't you want to join the healthy people?

So I pick up the diet Pepsi because I feel like it's the right thing to do and hold it in my hand like a trophy. I gaze proudly at the tiny black writing under the "Nutritional Facts" on the side of the can: "Calories 0%," "Fat 0%." "I am healthy," I say to myself, satisfied, yet totally oblivious to the 124 mg of harmful aspartame stewing inside it.